James Patterson - Postcard killers

"Dessie," he cal ed after her. "Dessie Larsson?"

She turned around, surprised that he had recognized her.

"Yes?" she said, and the next moment she had a huge microphone pressed up under her nose.

"What do you think of the unpleasant criticism that's being directed at you?"

Dessie stared at the man. He was unshaven and had bad teeth.

Don't blow up, she thought. Don't get angry, don't rush off, that's exactly what he wants.

"Criticism directed at me?" she said. "What do you mean specifically?"

"What do you think of the fact that you've introduced to Scandinavia the Anglo-Saxon tradition of paying large amounts of money to brutal serial kil ers?"

"I think you've completely misunderstood that," she replied, trying to sound calm and confident. "I haven't paid any money to -"

"But you tried to! " the reporter cried indignantly. "You wanted to buy interviews with brutal serial kil ers. Do you real y think it's moral y defensible to pay for their violent deeds?"

Dessie swal owed before she spoke again.

"Wel, firstly, not a single penny has been paid, and secondly, it wasn't my decision to -"

"Do you think you've made yourself complicit in the crime itself?" the reporter yel ed. "What's the difference between paying for a murder and paying for the details of a murder?"

Dessie final y pushed the microphone aside and walked away from the rude, stupid man.

"Let it go," Jacob said in her ear.

He was right beside her, struggling to keep up. He hadn't understood the exchange, but the content and spirit of it were al too clear to him.

"After this disaster, Duval wil be clutching at straws. In less than ten minutes' time he'l be asking us to interview the Rudolphs," Jacob continued. 108 Dessie took a deep breath and pushed the Eko reporter from her mind.

It turned out that Jacob was right.

It took seven minutes.

IT was already afternoon when Malcolm and Sylvia were led separately into the interrogation room where Dessie and Jacob sat waiting for them.

Sylvia gave a smal squeal of delight when she saw her brother.

They gave each other an emotional hug before the officers escorting them pul ed them apart.

Dessie had expected to be nervous before the meeting, but her anger and determination had pushed aside most feelings of that sort. She was quite convinced that the Rudolphs were the Postcard Kil ers.

Now she and Jacob had to pul the rug out from under them. Somehow.

But where to begin?

She studied each of them. They real y were strikingly attractive. Malcolm was trim but also muscular, and in al the right places. Dessie guessed that he must have swal owed a good number of anabolic steroids. Sylvia was extremely thin, but her breasts were plump and round. Silicone, of course.

The man had much fairer skin and hair than his sister, but they had the same eyes: the same shade of light gray, with long eyelashes that only added to their al ure and magnetism.

They were clearly overjoyed to see each other again. They settled down side by side on the other side of the table and seemed relaxed and happy to be there.

Dessie realized immediately that they hadn't recognized her.

They'd never seen a picture byline of her in the paper, and they evidently hadn't Googled her picture before they sent the postcard to her at Aftonposten.

Dessie and Jacob let the pair settle in, and they did not introduce themselves. Their expressions were completely neutral and they didn't take the initiative.

The siblings smiled contentedly and looked around the room. They were considerably more alert now than they had been during their questioning that morning. The change of questioners had evidently livened them up. 109 "So," Sylvia said, "what shal we talk about now?"

Dessie didn't change her expression.

"I've got a few questions about your interest in art," she said, and the brother and sister stretched their backs and smiled even more confidently.

"How nice," Sylvia said. "What are you wondering about? How can we help?"

"Your attitude toward art and reality," Dessie said. "I'm thinking about the murders in Amsterdam and Berlin, for instance. The kil ers mimicked two real people, Nefertiti and Vincent van Gogh."

Both Sylvia and Malcolm looked at her, a little wide-eyed. Their contented expressions were replaced by one of watchful interest.

"I'l explain," Dessie said. "It isn't at al clear that the Egyptian queen Nefertiti was missing her left eye. It's just that the bust of her in the Neues Museum is. Yet you stil took out Karen's and Bil y's eyes. I suppose you chose to imitate the art and not the person, didn't you?"

Sylvia laughed.

"This might even be exciting, your theory, this line of questioning," she said, "if it wasn't so crazy and absurd."

"Do you know how I realized it?" Dessie said. "Lindsay and Jeffrey – you remember them? – the British couple you kil ed in Amsterdam. You cut off their right ears, even though van Gogh cut off his left. But in the painting, his self-portrait, the bandage is on the right-hand side, of course, because he was painting his reflection. So you chose to re-create the artworks, rather than the people themselves."

"This is obviously going nowhere," Sylvia said. "I thought you were going to ask us some questions that might help catch the kil ers."

"We are," Jacob said, turning to Malcolm. "Where have you hidden your disguise?"

The siblings remained cool and control ed, but their supercilious attitude had vanished. Dessie noted how they unconsciously leaned closer to each other as the questions suddenly got tougher. They were a very tight-knit team, weren't they?

Malcolm manufactured a laugh.

"Disguise? I don't understand…"

Dessie looked at Jacob. He was clenching his teeth. He was presumably having to strain every muscle to overcome the desire to smash the kil er's head in.

"The brown wig," Jacob said. "The cap, the sunglasses, the coat you wear 110 when you go around emptying your victims' accounts. The outfit you wore when you pawned Claudia's Omega watch? And that you were wearing when you pretended to kil Nienke and Peter?"

Malcolm held his arms out, a questioning expression on his face.

"What are you talking about?"

"And the eyedrops," Jacob said. "They weren't in your hotel room. So you must have hidden them in the same place as the disguise."

Malcolm looked over at his sister.

"Do you understand what he's talking about?"

"The recording from the Grand Hotel was good," Jacob went on, "but not good enough."

He turned to Sylvia.

"It's obvious that you were kissing thin air when you pretended to kiss their cheeks, and that you were faking a conversation. And you forgot about the shadow."

Sylvia shook her head, but her smile seemed far less certain now.

"Sorry," she said, "but where are you going with this? I'm completely lost."

"I'm tel ing you about your mistakes," Jacob said. "I'm talking about the shadow, the one formed when a dead body got in the way of the daylight coming through a window."

Sylvia's eyes had narrowed and turned quite dark and smal.

"This is harassment," she said.

"The statue from Mil esgarden," Dessie said. "The one clearly visible on the floor of the corridor when you opened the door to Peter and Nienke's room.

That's the shadow he's talking about."

"We want a lawyer," Sylvia said.

The pair clammed up. they refused to say another word without a lawyer present.

The interrogation was stopped. The two of them were taken back to their cel s, and Dessie and Jacob headed off to Mats Duval 's office, where the investigating team had gathered.